Not another of those mails yaar…….

I have received another of those freebie mails today. Some prince in some African country has amassed countless treasures and wants to share it with me (ya can u believe it ?) All I need is to give some account details and our generous prince will transfer some money into my account. God bless the kind man. “Hurry Up and reply” proclaims the mail. Ya I would have done that only this is the like the tenth time I am receiving this mail. By this time he should have found some other nut to harass. Maybe the prince thinks I am the biggest fool on earth. (Ya he wouldn’t be the first one there.)

Birthday Bumps -owww

Whats the most painful part of a Birthday ? (If you are a girl than maybe its the increasing age ) If you are a guy than it has to be the bumps. It’s the time when your friends gather around you. It’s not to wish you or something. (they may forget that part – shameless fellows ) It’s to honor a time-tested tradition ( or so I have been convinced)

One will hold your legs, another will get your hands. A third unfortunate guy will pose, camera in hand . Unlucky because they will remain passive participants in the greatest event of the day.

Living life.

Have you ever gazed into someone’s eyes,
ever searched a face for a hidden smile ?
Have you ever made a person’s day ?
Have you ever for somebody else,
walked that extra mile ?

Have you ever spoken to a baby,
laughed at its gurgle.
Did you become a child around it ,
make faces to see it smile ?

Have you chatted up with an old woman ?
Listened to her talk about her day.
Did you leave  her feeling wanted,
and an important part of your life ?

Have you ever stood in the rain,
felt the sound of water hitting land ?
Did you let it drench you to the skin ,
let the raindrops wash your eyes?

Have you climbed a hill?
Stood in the dark on a moonless night?
Have you ever shivered in the winter cold,
sat on the ground and watched the stars glow bright?

Have you watched the sun rise in the morning ?
Seen it’s pink glow as it sets over the horizon ?
Have you felt the summer breeze across your face,
Watched the early bird as it flies ?

If you have been touched by life,
remember these little moments of joy.
These are the moments to live for,
These are the ones worth keeping with you,
till the day you die.

Ten things not to do in CAT

1. Take a leave from office on the day of your CAT

I went to office on the day of my exam. Reached the hall with thoughts of java in my head. Believe me ‘generics’ and ‘inheritance’ concepts do not help on the exam

2. Make sure you know where exactly is the location of your exam.

My exam was at a college which I knew only by name. I had no idea about its location. Fortunately I knew a friend who had studied there and was free on D-day. I owe you one Amol Patil

3. Carry a good enough ID proof

I had my PAN Card and company ID as photo proof. But the pictures on these were so small that the lady spent a good one minute comparing my face and my photo. I am not sure if she was convinced or she let me in to avoid a potential situation

4. Carry a bottle of water.

Ya this is the golden rule. Always always carry a bottle of water. It’s worth the effort

5. Reach one and a half hour before the exam starts.

Another pearl of wisdom. I barely made it on time.(Refer to point 2)

6. Don’t solve the paper serially

In the manual exam you can turn the pages back and forth. You can actually spend a good minute going through the paper, identifying the best questions. Online it is difficult and time-consuming. While solving serially there is a possibility there wont be enough time for the third session. Try and make sure that you give sufficient time to all the sections and not the first one only. Ideally set a deadline for each section and move to the next once the time is up.

7. Don’t take CAT difficulty personally

There will be some question that you may not be able to crack. SKIP IT AND MOVE ON. Failing to answer it does not reflect on your intelligence. (Stupid me- I wasted 5 minutes on a question and could not solve it in the end)

8. Take the exam seriously

That is exactly what I learnt form CAT 2009

9. Once its over go and party with friends

YES DO IT. YOU DESERVE IT (I didn’t )

10. If CAT has gone badly it is not the end of the world

Remember – In the end it is just an exam. Nothing more. Just an exam

Is that legible ??

When was the last time you appreciated some good writing. And I don’t mean the content. I mean the writing. Handwritten data. Not text generated by some monkey banging on the keyboard. Words written on paper. Thoughts that became lines through somebody’s hand.

I for one have always had a ‘not good’ handwriting. Mind you, it’s not bad but it’s not great either. Kind of ‘OK OK’. Calling it ’slightly above legible’ would be honest. In school, college when we had to enter data into notebooks handwriting was very admired asset. I remember my school teachers appreciating the handwriting of some of my classmates.(Never mine ). They said that people with good handwriting always got a couple of marks more than they deserved. One of my friend’s notes were always borrowed by girls because of his neat writing style. (That it could also be because he was the topper never got in to our teen heads.) All this was motivation enough for the rest of us to try to improve our writing . My battles were always going to be a lost cause. History would stand testimony to my loosing struggle against bad handwriting. From the day I lifted the pen, the tag of bad writing stuck to me. The first notebooks were filled with pencils. Mine were filed with smudges and erase marks. And ‘untidy’,'bad -handwriting’ remarks from my teachers. Poor me. My parents were perplexed. To fix my bad handwriting they brought  cursive writing books. I had to fill these books up with words. Write the same line again and again. Copy the alphabets in the impossible curvy style shown in those books. Not that our curves ever matched. Stupid books only made my handwriting look worse.I wrote hard. I sharpened my pencils continuously to get that sharp edge. I erased furiously. All to no effect. All I might have achieved is to burn my parents money. Fast. Maybe the Government should exempt money spent on pencils and cursive writing books from taxes.  God knows if I did the same exercise today, I could at least burn a few thousand calories . Maybe  Atkins should be informed of this technique too.

Over school I graduated from pencils to ink pens. My handwriting on the other hand slipped from passable to horrible. I came home with smudges on my hands, books, sometimes even on the uniform.  I armed myself with blotting paper, ink cloth (That does not refer to  my hanky and good pens. But no use. It was a lost battle. The handwriting did not improve. It never has. I moved to bold pens. The smudges are gone .  (I do occasionally manged to get some lines drawn on my hands.) They have been replaced by deep indentations on the papers where my pen has traveled. Today I am with pilot pens and gel pens. They say it spoils your handwriting. I am safe on that point.

Even today when I come across a well written paper I can’t help but admire it. For a second I forget about the content and simply look at the text. Beautifully curved letters, smart paragraphs, bold fullstops. And I wistfully remember my own writing. It’s a relief I work from a computer. Ms Word makes sure that the nonsense I type out looks as good as that of the others.  With a little creativity I can even make it look better . A person who once saw my writing said that writing wise I could be a doctor. The guy made my day. (No offense to doctors here. ) It also reminded me that when it come to handwriting I am in illustrious company. Mahatma Gandhi, Sigmund Freud, Bill Gates,Albert Einstein and many more. Maybe someday some kid will invoke my name to defend his poor writing skills…………. Amen to that.

………

I am among friends.
There is some chatter going on.
I appear to be listening in.
But my eyes are far away,
As are my thoughts

I am watching her from afar,
as she talks, giggles and laughs.
I see her twirling her hair.
A friend asks my opinion,
I nod as if in agreement,
I don’t care what they are discussing,
But I make sure to shake my head enough.

My eyes moves back to her,
to her who holds,
the strings to my heart
She sees me from afar,
She waves as a smile comes on her face,
I wave back ,
as that smile lights up my heart.

We leave our friends behind,
as we walk over to one another.
We meet midway and catch up on each other.
There is so much I want to say,
but the longing to hear her takes over.
I let her talk, I hear her laugh.
I add a question here, a thought there,
I stand there as her voice flows over me.
As I keep looking into those eyes,
I know I am the envy of all guys around.

Somebody calls her name out.
The spell is broken,
as her name lingers in the air.
She has to leave,
I know I cant stop her.
I watch her walk away,
as I let this moment settle in my heart.

I know this may not end my way,
I know this may not last,
But I am not giving up.
I am keeping that tinest of hope alive.
Like some one said,
It is better to have loved and lost
than to have never loved at all.

Is Philately dead ?

I am writing this is because I just realized that one of my oldest hobbies is dead. The sad thing is that I did not notice its absence in my life. I was searching for some books to give away when I found my hobby. It was not just dead. It was buried too. I stop whatever I am doing. For a second. Then I am searching for those books again. A second burial has been given to my hobby, as other books start piling over it.

Rewinding life

Play…Pause…….. Rewind….. Play……

That is how I watched the movie Matrix. Three times. Took me quite an effort to understand it, I know .The ability to go back and forth is limited to PCs and television videos. Ever wondered how it would be to this in real life. To travel to your past.To move back and forth in time, to do things differently, to pause time or to simply just slow things down.

I know experience is a great teacher. Everything that happens, happens for a reason. But its just that sometimes a lesson you learnt turns out to be a slightly expensive one. Lessons that for years leave a bad aftertaste. I know of incidents that I wished had turned out differently for all of us involved. Incidents that left an indelible mark on me. And a feeling that maybe just maybe things could have gone a little better. Maybe I should have handled the situation differently. Maybe …

Firefox rocks

If you are seeing this page there is no need to explain to you what a browser is. In simple terms the application you are using to view this page is called a browser.

Assuming that you are viewing this page from a computer in India, there is a high possibility that you are using either Internet Explorer or Firefox. Small percentage of people might also be seeing this in Chrome or Safari. If you are using Internet Explorer there is a good possibility that you are using I.E 6. In the interest of good browsing experience I appeal you to stop.

PLEASE SWITCH TO FIREFOX.

Download the latest Firefox version from the mozilla site.It is free, better ,safer and gives a far better experience. the reason people are stuck with IE is that Microsoft ships it as a part of its Windows platform. A new user starts his internet experience with IE and invariably ends up stuck with it. he never realizes that I.E. is not the end when it comes to experiencing the net. Firefox id the way to go.Many people are realizing this and are  switching to Firefox. I suggest you do so to.

As a random net surfer i have often found that I.E simply hangs. You click on some link and IE goes dead. You see your title bar showing a “Not Responding” message. The scroll bar refuses to move. Just as you are about to start cursing , the browser suddenly comes back to life and you can see a new page beginning to load.

India – a poor country of rich politicians.

India the way Britishers show it in the pre-independence days – a land of snake charmers, half naked fakirs, sadhus who sleep on nails etc etc.

India the way I see it today – a land of smart politicians, countless scams, and missing millions.

OK,  I know I am stretching the truth a bit far, but Transparency International India’s (TII) corruption index released on Tuesday has ranked India 84th out of 180 countries. That and a certain Mr Madhu Koda left me thinking of the great scams we Indians have pulled off since Independence.Truly the greatness of the Indian mind can be seen in the long list of scams that our countrymen have pulled off since we got rid of the British.